Are tomatoes even conceivable in this weather? I don’t know about you, but this is the longest, darkest, coldest Colorado winter I remember. This is Iowa winter, Minnesota winter. I know we shouldn’t complain; friends of mine are in Philly for a jewelry trade show, and I shudder to think of what they’re slogging through, stuck in City Center, and I just hope their hotel is stocked up with food and has a big lounge somewhere with a fireplace and that the path to the nearest friendly bar is shoveled and not very far.

So: We’re not socked in with two or three or four feet of snow, and that’s good, a blessing to not forget. And the sun is coming back. And we have tomato dreams. AND a tomato-book winner:

Cindy Peterson's tomato patch

Cindy Peterson gardens in Golden. These are a mere twenty of her tomato plants from last year. They got hit by the July 20 hailstorm and are shown recovering in August. The varieties: Golden Jubilee, Cherokee Purple, Early Girl, Mortgage Lifter, 1st Lady, Sweet 100 Cherry, Russian Rose, Manalucie, Dolly Parton, Mr. Stripey and Kosovo and Cambell’s Soup. And I thought I had no resistance to a tomato description. (She doesn’t mention my own tomato weakness, a Russian-style tomato called Black Pear, which is not like the Yellow Pear cherry tomato at all; it’s medium-sized, ripens to a chocolate color, keeps bearing right into frost and holds well on the kitchen table while you’re trying to get time to can/freeze/grill it). Cindy wins “The Too Many Tomatoes Cookbook.”

Owen, 7, in his parents' bean patch

And I don’t know beans about kids, but I know a cute photo when I see it. This is Owen, 7, in the bean patch of his parents, James and Cindy Searles of Cotopaxi. Owen and his parents win a copy of Sharon Lovejoy’s “Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars.” The photo is not last year’s bean patch, it’s 2008’s. Beans had a hard time last year — mine and the Searles’. It was wet, it was cool, then it was hot and dry, then it was hailing.

Ah, Colorado. We gardeners love you, but secretly, sometimes, in the dark of night or the oh-too-early morning, between pulling bindweed and squashing beetles, between amending sand and cutting into clay, between shivering and the passing-out-from-heat exhaustion, yes, I confess, we curse you. But … doesn’t it make the triumphs sweeter?

And every year, a different story. Not for us those carefully orchestrated springs, where the daffodils bloom on April 2 precisely like a Haydn concerto. Nope. It’s more like Stephanie Davis’ “Talkin’ Harvest Time Blues,” which KUNC played just yesterday to taunt me (Wendy Wham, you are now on my list of “public figures I suspect are secret gardeners.)